With the Raiders big road win yesterday in Montana, Massey has bumped Southern Oregon up in the computer rankings to #3. SOU will play Massey’s #12, #11, and #9 over the next three weeks. Two of those games are at home in Ashland. Massey has the Raiders as at least 7 point favorites in each contest.

The coaches’ poll comes out tomorrow. Don’t look for any major changes in the top nine from the coaches. The coaches don’t tend to move teams up unless the team in front of them lost. It will be interesting to see what they do with #2 Morningside. The Raiders were punished in the poll for losing to NCAA DI UC Davis, even though the Raiders accumulated more yards than Davis. Yesterday Morningside lost to an NCAA DIII team (Wisconsin-Whitewater) by two touchdowns. Massey says that UC Davis could beat Wisconsin-Whitewater by a touchdown. Will the coaches drop Morningside as much as they dropped the Raiders? I doubt it. Look for Morningside to slip barely out of the top five and the Raiders to still be at #9.

It’s way too early for these rankings to mean anything, but the NAIA coaches have SOU at #2 in the country, and Massey has them at #3. Massey Ratings, as shown above, also has SOU winning all of their regular season games against NAIA opponents. At Eastern Oregon, for the very first game, is a tough draw. If SOU can start the season 3-1 or 4-0, then these preseason predictions are probably correct. Go Raiders!

Bronsen Ader and Matt Retzlaff celebrate a touchdown in the 2016 spring game